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Behind the Scenes
Oksana Yushko
Published on 08/06/12
The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow held an opening of the theater after 6 years of reconstruction with an opera of Ruslan and Lyudmila. Ruslan and Lyudmila is Mikhail Glinka’s second opera. The first time the opera was staged in the Bolshoi was on December 9, 1846. It was later followed by nine different productions and 700 performances. Production director Dmitry Chernyakov believes that the current opera is the only one of the versions that has a happy ending and it suits the historical reopening of the Bolshoi Theater, one of the main landmarks of the Russian capital and a symbol of Russian culture.
The theater, built in 1825, closed for reconstruction in 2005. The Russian government spent 21 billion rubles ($681 million) on the restoration, which involved more than 3,600 designers, builders and engineers.